Travel back into history with author, photographer, and historical architecture buff Mark William Pollock as he races against time to chronicle the abandoned asylums of New England before the forces of government and developers tear them down. Scores of photographs and some historical background of dubious worth are bandied about as the sad nature of treatment of mental illness in the northeast United States is examined in the followup to Pollock's book of east coast Lighthouses, Guardians of the Gray Atlantic. Sadly, many of the magnificent buildings photographed here are gone, and have become a sad reminder of the transient nature of everything we build on this earth. This is the Book of Lost Things.